In this series of pieces, Pro Football Focus is hammering into the value of players. To us it’s a “Performance Based Value” number, telling you what players were worth (by our grading) in 2012. You can read about the work we’ve done to create it here, but in short:

• It’s solely about what a player did on the field in 2012
• Players are grouped by positions so their play essentially earns them a portion of the positional salary pool
• It’s all about cap hits (these values are approximate)

Here are 2012′s most undervalued and overvalued Washington Redskins:

(* Denotes player missed significant portion of time through injury)

Undervalued

1. Alfred Morris, Halfback

In the battle between the Redskins star rookies, Morris wins this time as his sixth-round money was significantly lower than Robert Griffin III’s second overall pick money. His 51.0 Elusive Rating was fifth-best among all halfbacks. While a lot of people worry about players hitting a rookie wall, Morris actually improved late in the season with four straight games with five or six missed tackles caused to end the regular season.

Throughout the 2012 season everyone let you know just how good Robert Griffin III is, but in case you need another stat to back it up, he averaged 10.8 yards per pass attempt when blitzed. The Redskins will enjoy these next few years getting great value for their star skill players. The only question that remains now is which of the rookie quarterbacks was most undervalued in 2012.

With Brian Orakpo injured, the Redskins counted on Kerrigan for all of their pass rushing needs. He ended up with nine sacks, nine hits and 51 hurries, which is fairly good even though it was on a high 611 pass rushes. While he isn’t yet in the same category as the best pass rushers in the league, Kerrigan is certainly an asset and worth more than his rookie contract.

The problem here is not that Trent Williams is a bad offensive tackle. In fact, he allowed just four sacks, two hits and 18 hurries which is very good, and he also had the seventh-best run block rating for left tackles, at +7.5. The problem is that his cap hit was ridiculously high in 2012. While it will go down in future years in his contract, it is still higher than the $6.9m he should have made in 2012. If he wants to live up to future years of his contract, he will have to do more to set himself apart from the other tackles.

Hall is a high risk, high reward cornerback. He allowed 1,045 passing yards this year, the second-most for all cornerbacks, which is a huge concern. On the bright side, he did have four interceptions and nine passes defended, which explains why his Performance Based Value is as high as it is. The bad news for Redskins fans is his cap hit is just going to get higher as we get further into his contract.

The Redskins used Bowen more than any other defensive linemen in 2012, but the problem was he wasn’t very effective on his snaps. His raw numbers of three sacks, six hits and 20 hurries look decent, but it came on a very high 531 pass rushes. He had some good games against the run to somewhat make up for it, but with so many of his snaps being pass rushes that’s not enough to justify $4.5 million.

Due to the salary cap penalties, the Redskins were among the lowest in terms of money spent. With the combination of under and overvalued players, they were the closest to even of all the teams in the league. The penalties might make it hard on the Redskins this year, but having both Robert Griffin III and Alfred Morris on the roster for little money now gives them the potential to be one of the best Performance Based Value teams in the near future.

Seems like a fair assessment to me. Morris is the obvious steal of the 2012 draft (finally that award goes to the Redskins!) It's almost impossible to overestimate how much RGIII means to this team. Trent Williams is great but signed his contract near the very end of the old system and can't possibly live up to it unless he was clearly bound for the HOF. I don't have much love for Hall and have thought he's overrated since before we got him. It'd be nice to see more out of our defensive tackles — both Bowen and Cofield.

"I’m never under the assumption that you draft for need. You draft the best available football player on the board. ... Because, in the long run, they are the ones who will help you win the most games." - Scot McCloughan